The present invention relates to a document composition supporting technique, and more particularly to a document composition supporting method and system suitable for the use thereof for standardization of terms used in a technical document or the like. The expression of "standardization of term" or "terminological standardization" used in the present specification means the standardization (or unification) of a term in alternative spelling/expression (AS/E) into a term in standard expression (SE). The term in standard expression is a character string corresponding to, for example, a so-called entry of a dictionary. The alternative spelling/expression is a changed version of the standard expression. There may be a plurality of terms in alternative spelling/expression corresponding to one term in standard expression. Terms in alternative spelling/expression includes, for example, various synonyms of a term in standard expression, slangs such as business or commercial slangs, a character string including a mark expression of a prolonged sound in the Japanese syllable, and so forth. These terms can be regarded as being terms in alternative spelling/expression which are identical to the term in standard expression.
At the time of composition or editing of a Japanese or English document, at the time of document translation from Japanese to English or English to Japanese, or at the time of editing of the translated document, it is generally necessary to standardize these terms or target equivalent words used in the document.
Hitherto, however, the standardization of terms could not help relying upon the composer's (or writer's), reviser's, translator's or checker's knowledge or individual common sense. For example, a word " (furoppi disuku)" in Japanese may be called " (furoppi)", "FD (efudi)", " (akaibu disuketto)", (disuketto), " (furoppii desuku)", and so forth. These terms are all correct but the co-existence thereof in the same document should be avoided. If the terminological standardization to " (furoppi disuku)" is to be made, it is required that with the term " (furoppi disuku)" taken as a standard expression, the other terms having expressions different from the standard expression should be changed (or standardized) into the term in standard expression.
In the case of English, the word of interest includes various expressions of "floppy disk", "floppy-disk", "diskette", "archive disk", "archive diskette", and so forth. In composing a document, the terminological standardization is required with any one of those expressions being taken as a standard expression.
Also, the terminological standardization at the time of document composition has hitherto been made by a document composer or writer. Accordingly, there is a problem that various technical terms may be used by individual writers or even by the same writer each time. Thus, there may result in that a reader such as a user, new comer, translator or the like has a misunderstanding about the contents of a given document, is perplexed thereabout or harbors suspicion against the document itself, a firm presenting the document, or products associated with the document.
Even if a document composer is initiated, by a manual, into the use of terms referring to a terminology dictionary prepared for terminological standardization, the attainment of complete terminological standardization is difficult since it is rarely the case that the document composer completely refers to the terminology dictionary or it is ordinary that the processing is eventually performed depending upon the composer's knowledge or individual common sense. Also, it is general that no particular record is made as to which one of a plurality of terms expressing the same matter did the composer use. Therefore, when somebody checks the composed document, the checker will know the used term or the unstandardized term through the conjecture of the whole by the desultory reading of the document.
Though the use of an electronic dictionary by a computer for terminological standardization may be considered, all of used softwares is a searching or viewing software. Therefore, in the case where the electronic dictionary includes no character string for which the search is to be made, a user will take a wasteful time and labor for the search and will be subjected to stress. Fundamentally, this case is substantially the same in effect as the case where the reference is made to a paper-like (or book-like) terminology dictionary or lexicon.
Search/replacement, which is one function of a word processor, is known as another method for making the standardization of terms in a document to be composed or revised. Though the search/replacement method is suitable in the case where several different character strings or words of the same kind are to be replaced, this method cannot make a comprehensive search/replacement for plural kinds of unspecified character strings. Sentence check is also known as one function of a word processor. With this function, it is possible to replace inadequate terms by terms selected as being standard. However, it is required for the utilization of the sentence checking function that terms in standard expression and terms in alternative spelling/expression should be inputted one by one manually into a dictionary in a sentence checking software beforehand. Namely, the mere input of an electronized terminology dictionary does not suffice for utilization of the sentence checking function.
In the case of translation between the Japanese language and a foreign language, for example, in the case of Japanese-to-English translation, it is general that a Japanese text and a paper-like terminology dictionary (or parallel translation list) are supplied to a translator. The terminology dictionary includes Japanese standard expressions and their English equivalents (English standard expressions) side by side. The translator will refer to the dictionary to search for terms when he or she does not know or not be sure of the terms for the translation. Also, it is general that no record is made as to which originals the used target equivalents correspond to. Therefore, another person checking the result of translation can know the correspondence of the originals to the used target equivalents only through the conjecture of the whole, for example, by the desultory reading of the result of translation.
In general, translated sentences are checked by a checker after translation. The primary duty of the translation checker is to check translation omissions, mistranslation, grammatical correctness and meaning. But, a further time and labor are required for checking whether the terms in a terminology dictionary or parallel translation list supplied to the translator were correctly used or not. If all technical terms used in the original text are written in standard expression, the checking of terms will be easy. However, in the case where the original text is written including alternative spelling/expressions, there will result in that the translator uses another target equivalent for a term written in alternative spelling/expression since the term written in alternative spelling/expression is not found out even if the reference is made to the terminology dictionary. If there are frequently occurred the cases where the translator cannot find out an intended term in spite of the reference to the terminology dictionary, the translator may have a suspicion that the reference to the terminology dictionary is wasteful. This will result in the decrease of the number of times of reference to the terminology dictionary and will ultimately result in that the translator uses target equivalents relied upon his or her own knowledge in disregard of the terminology dictionary.
In the case of Japanese-to-English translation, there is known a method in which English equivalents are retrieved using a dictionary software by a computer to take them into the translation. In this method, however, it is required that a Japanese character string should be highlighted and the Japanese language should be inputted to search an electronic dictionary. Therefore, this method has no essential difference from the case where a person refers to a paper-like terminology dictionary.
Machine translation is also known. In a method based on the machine translation, it is possible to make the correspondence of necessary target equivalents if standard expression and alternative spelling/expression are registered beforehand in an electronic dictionary used for machine translation. In general, however, since the translation of the whole of sentences obtained by the machine translation includes many unnatural, inadequate and/or incorrect expressions and therefore has a poor quality of translation, the result of translation is not suited for as use as a technical document, specification or the like which requires a reliability done by a professional translator. Also, however, completely an electronic dictionary for machine translation may be consolidated, it is difficult to make translation with terminological standardization.
As mentioned above, the manual standardization terms or target equivalents at the time of composition or editing of a Japanese or English document, at the time of document translation from Japanese to English or English to Japanese, or at the the time of editing of the translated document involves a mental and physical labor as well as the difficulty of judgement as to where in the composed or translated document did the composer or translator use terms or target equivalents designated by a terminology dictionary and/or which ones of designated terms or target equivalents did the composer or translator not use and hence whether or not the replacement is necessary. Also, even if an electronic or a paper terminology dictionary containing a rich vocabulary is prepared, the dictionary is not sufficiently used in many cases and there remains no evidence of whether or not the dictionary was used. Therefore, a question arises as to the quality level and control of a composed or translated document.